Fisheries Officer Uses Dance to Promote Conservation

(ZIZ News) — Tricia Greaux’s decision to use her hobby of dancing to help spread the message of conservation in St. Kitts and Nevis has gotten international recognition.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN] published an article on its website on August 5th, highlighting Greaux’s work as a local fisheries officer and dancer.

On Friday morning, ZIZ News visited Greaux at her job site at the Department of Marine Resources to get her thoughts on the article feature.

“Two years ago, I had the opportunity to travel to Belize as a Junior Marine Protected Areas Officer and we had an amazing experience because it really opened my eyes to what could actually happen and how to move towards creating managed areas in St. Kitts and Nevis so they contacted me and they said that because of the work that I was doing with regards to combining dance as a means to promote, not just social issues but also environmental issues, they wanted to do an article to highlight that,” she said.

Greaux, who is also the creative Director of Anjolique Dance Company, explained how she has been fusing dance and marine awareness.

She said “One of the mandates of that dance company is awareness through dance and so, whether it’s dealing with social issues like breast cancer awareness or environmental issues for example, we have a piece on the lionfish and it’s about making sure that we’re aware of the lionfish in our waters, it’s an invasive species, it’s not native to our area and what we should do, the solution is in the dance.”

Greaux said the general public has been very receptive of her decision to spread the message of conservation through dance. She has even offered her services to help spread the message. She can be contacted at 6697301 or via email at anjoliquedancecompany@gmail.com.

“We have done that performance for different events and one of those events was at the Miss East Pearl Pageant and there was a lady afterwards, she came and she said ‘Oh, that’s what we’re supposed to do, eat the lionfish’ and I said ‘exactly, you got it’ and there was another performance where we were launching a campaign, an awareness campaign to promote The Narrows at the marine managed area and persons came up, they were asking the dancers all different questions, where they can get the lion fish…all kinds of different questions and that’s why members of the Anjolique Dance Company are educated about all of the issues that we’re creating awareness about so that they can be ambassadors for those issues,” she said.